I
Her face beaming with joy, and her feet stumbling over one another in their haste, Eurycleia ascended to the chamber where Penelope lay sleeping. "Awake, Penelope, awake!" she cried, standing by the bedside; "come and see with thine own eyes the fulfilment of all thy hopes. Odysseus has come home at last, and all the wooers lie slain by his hand!"
"Thou art mad, nurse," answered Penelope pettishly, turning in her bed and rubbing her eyes; "why mockest thou me in my sorrow with thy folly? and why hast thou disturbed me in the sweetest sleep that ever I had since the fatal, the accursed day when my lord sailed for Troy? But for thy years and thy faithful service I would have paid thee unkindly for this wanton insult"
"Heaven forbid that I should mock or insult thee, dear child!" cried the nurse, her eyes filling with tears. "I have told thee naught but the truth. The stranger whom we thought a beggar was Odysseus himself. Telemachus knew this all the time, but kept it from thee by the command of his father."
"May the gods ever bless thee for these tidings!" said Penelope, springing from the couch, and throwing her arms round the nurse's neck. "But tell me truly, how did he with his single hand gain the mastery over such a multitude?"
"I saw not how it was done," answered Eurycleia. "I heard but the groans of the men as they were stricken, for I was shut up with the handmaids in the women's chamber. When it was over, he called me, and I found him standing among the slain, like a lion by his prey. It was a sight to gladden thy heart."
But Penelope's first impulse of joyful surprise had passed, and a cold fit of doubt and distrust succeeded, "It cannot be!" she murmured; "some god has taken the likeness of my husband, and slain the wooers." Even when Eurycleia told her how she had discovered the scar, while washing the feet of Odysseus, she remained unshaken in her unbelief. "The counsels of the gods," she said, "are beyond our knowing, and they can take upon them disguises too deep for a poor woman's wit. But come, let us go and see the slaughtered wooers, and their slayer, whoever he be."